About 0.8 percent of households in Denver, Los Angeles, Miami and New York City owned chickens in 2010, according to a new report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. What’s more, nearly 4 percent of residents in these cities say they plan to pick up a chick in the next few years.

“Chickens are a symbol of urban nirvana,” The New York Timeswrote last year, “their coops backyard shrines to a locavore movement that has city dwellers moving ever closer to their food.”

Perhaps the “poultry Pampers” and hen lingerie point to the next phase of the urban chicken trend: home invasion.

More people are keeping chickens as pets instead of as farm animals, Slabaugh says. “I bet close to 50 percent of our readers have chickens around for companionship rather than for any real agricultural purposes,” he tells The Salt.

“There are many breeds of chickens that are good to look at but don’t lay very good eggs,” he says — and they’re still popular with urban farmers.

“I got a call the other day from a lady in Idaho because her chicken had a problem with its foot,” he says. “She called it a ‘lap chicken.’ It crawled up in her lap, just like any other pet.”

But Torres of MyPetChicken.com says this might be more the exception than the norm.

There are a few die-hard poultry people who keep the birds in their homes 24/7, she says. They have decked-out chicken condos that can be outlandish.

“But usually what happens is that a bird will get injured and someone might bring it inside to recuperate,” she says. “The diaper makes cleanup much, much easier.”

After the rehabilitation, it can be tough to send the bird back to the yard, Torres says.